Category: PressThink

In this podcast, Jay Rosen makes two very pertinent connections between the tech world and journalism. The first one is about bug catching, the second about usability. Journalism’s role is to make it easy for users to use their own democracy, to participate without much prior knowledge.

Jay argues that journalists in the U.S. will not step outside of the agreed boundaries of what is considered “the political debate”. If your coverage stays between “what the Republicans are saying” and “what the Democrats are saying”, you’re safe. BTW, this phenomenon is not confined to the U.S.

“(…) I’m sure Dave would suggest a better way of doing this, but I’m not a geek and still wanted to collect all of Dave’s and Jay Rosen’s podcasts on “rebooting the news” in one view. Subscribing to the RSS feed of Scripting News (http://scripting.com/rss.xml) helps but shows all of Dave’s other posts as well. So here comes: (…)”

Jay Rosen explains why he believes that in the new territory across the digital divide, hybrid forms of journalism, which combine properties of open (amateur) as well as closed (professional) editorial systems, will be the strongest.

What I find more interesting about this blog post than the content of the experiment or indeed the ensuing US-centric political flame war in the comments is the concept of the experiment, as well as Jay’s reference to Dave Winer’s rivers of news, and the concern that filtering may not keep pace.

Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn’t, couldn’t or didn’t. (…) There’s $10,000 to test it, courtesy of Craig Newmark.